By Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't working on computers and scanners, he's spending time with his wife and kids, or...

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

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There will be no peace in Israel as long as the terrorists are allowed to operate with impunity.

This author License To Terrorize

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

Author Sponsor

There will be no peace in Israel as long as the terrorists are allowed to operate with impunity.

This author License To Terrorize

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

Author Sponsor

There will be no peace in Israel as long as the terrorists are allowed to operate with impunity.

Israel has signed a cease-fire with Hamas, so the world can breathe a sigh of relief, I guess...at the least, we can be relieved until Hamas once again decides to break the cease-fire and start firing more rockets into Israel. Considering Hamas launched several more rockets into Israel even after the cease-fire was signed, this is not some farfetched notion...more of a reality.

This seems to be how it works. Over the past year, Hamas has launched hundreds of rockets into Israel, and the rest of the world didn't particularly care. It was only when Israel finally retaliated and Hamas stepped up their shelling that the onslaught started making headlines in the mainstream media. Nobody cares about Israel, it seems, unless it is election season, or Israel finally decides to strike back at the terrorists that relentlessly peck away at them every day.

But through the countless conflicts and cease-fires, one thing never seems to go away: the terrorists. Hamas is a terrorist organization, yet they hold a place in the Palestinian government. They have successfully indoctrinated a large enough portion of the Palestinian populace into believing in their cause that their power in Gaza seems to be continuing to rise...yet allying themselves with a terrorist organization likely will not be a good long-term strategy for the Palestinian people.

This time, Israel and Hamas were on the brink of a ground war. Israel had managed to launch a series of successful air raids, taking out Hamas leaders and rocket launch sites. But the tendency of the terrorists is to hide among civilian populations. They purposely launch their rockets from sites near schools, residential areas, mosques, and hospitals, in the hopes that an Israeli air strike will not only take out the missile site, but cause significant collateral damage, as well.

This is the thing that always seems to inexplicably get past the blame-Israel side of the debate - you know, the crowd that is always blaming Israel every time a Palestinian civilian is killed. Hamas's greatest weapon is not their rockets, it is their PR campaign. The death of Palestinian civilians is not only a good thing for Hamas, it is a vital part of their anti-Israel strategy, and that is what makes the terrorists of Hamas some of the most detestable pieces of human filth on Planet Earth. They depend on civilian deaths to further their goals, and they have built their entire strategy around getting the Israeli military to cause collateral damage so that they can then complain to the United Nations about how horrible the IDF is.

But unfortunately, Hamas's strategy of putting civilians in danger and then complaining when they are killed has been extremely effective, especially among the United Nations, which tends to be made up of anti-Semitic leaders who would just as soon see Israel not exist. The tactic has been so effective that Hamas has even taken to publishing fake photographs (this time around, they claimed that a photo of a boy killed in fighting in Syria was a Palestinian killed by an Israeli bomb), or staging fake injuries and deaths (multiple videos have come out of Palestinians dragging away dead bodies, but as the camera stays on them, the dead rise and walk away with no injuries), or claiming that the IDF killed civilians that they didn't (a report on CNN blamed Israel for killing a Palestinian boy, when the boy was actually killed by a Hamas rocket that went astray).

Among the nations of the world, Israel has shown an exceptional amount of restraint for a longer period of time than any other nation in the world ever would. Considering what Israel has to put up with on a daily basis - never knowing if this is the moment Hamas will hit one of their population centers with another barrage of rockets - Israel would be well within their rights to send the IDF into Gaza and the West Bank to root out the terrorists once and for all.

And there is another element that tends to be left out whenever conflict arises between Hamas and Israel: Iran. One thing that was inexplicably left out of the discussion on Iran during the recent Vice Presidential debate was Iran's support of Islamic terrorist groups. This should always be an element of discussion when talking about Iran's ongoing nuclear program. During the debate, Joe Biden foolishly stated that it didn't matter whether Iran was able to get sufficient nuclear material to make a nuclear bomb, because they didn't have a delivery system that would give them the capability to threaten the world with such a weapon. But this line of thinking completely ignores the fact that Iran is currently the world's biggest state sponsor of terrorism. Most of the rockets that Hamas has sent into Israel over the past few weeks were given to them by Iran. And Iran doesn't need a full-scale atom bomb sitting on top of an ICBM in order to be a threat to the world. There are such things as dirty bombs and suitcase nukes. As long as Iran is allowed to continue their support of terrorist organizations such as Hamas, agreements like this cease-fire aren't worth the paper they're written on - the cease-fire only delays the inevitable return to hostilities...and it doesn't help matters any that the Arab Spring has brought us leadership in Egypt that is more friendly to the terrorists than to the nation of Israel.

It is only a matter of time before the rockets start flying again, or another bus is blown up, or maybe a cafe or a restaurant. It isn't a matter of whether Hamas will strike again, it is only a matter of when. If the international community truly cared a whit about seeing peace in the Middle East, the first condition of any peace agreement would be the permanent disbanding of Hamas, and an understanding that any militant action taken by Palestinian terrorists would be met with immediate and deadly force.

But too much of the international community that decides such things is made up of a collection of anti-Semitic rubes who are all-to-willing to dance to Hamas's tune every time Israeli bombs take out one of the civilians the terrorists were hiding behind. It doesn't matter to them that Hamas is constantly breaking cease-fire agreements and always targets Israel's population centers. It is irrelevant to them that Iran helps Hamas to further their goal of causing the deaths of civilians on both sides of the conflict.

There will be no peace in Israel as long as the terrorists are allowed to operate with impunity. All that these on-again off-again cease fire agreements and treaties do is to give Hamas permission to terrorize Israel's civilian population. A cease-fire is not peace, it is just an opportunity for the terrorists to catch their breath and build up their armaments. As chilling as the thought of a ground war in Gaza is, the sad truth is that a ground war may be what it takes for Israel to finally put a long-term end to the rocket attacks and suicide bombings. But for now, we can only hold our breath and see just how long it takes before the rockets start flying again.

License To Terrorize: Details

"License To Terrorize" was first released on 11.23.2012 and last updated on 10.17.2018 6:47 AM EDT.
Robert Cleveland submitted this feature to AND Magazine.
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